Thanks to Creative Saskatchewan this month Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan had the opportunity to workshop the script and puppets in development for Titus A. puppet revenge. This generous grant allowed SOTS to assemble most of the creative team and try out the puppets and the script. The days were extremely busy and full trying out all sorts of experiments and assumptions. We worked with the amount of text: lots of text, no text, and somewhere in between. We tested the visual storytelling: how do the puppeteers engage with the audience? The puppets? Each other? We tested the functionality of the table top puppets: analyzing the puppet movement and checking for needed adjustments to make the puppets easy to manipulate effectively. We also incorporated shadow puppetry with the table top puppets. Many questions were asked… some were answered… and even more were raised as a result of our experimentation - haha! To our die-hard text fans- never fear, Will Brooks has your back: you will get plenty of juicy rhyming couplets and verse and poetic language! All in all, it was a creatively fruitful workshop discovering all the possibilities that this show has!

As for the puppet build we have taken our notes from the ‘on our feet‘ SOTS workshop… back to the, ‘in our hands’, Stumped building workshop and are addressing all that we can while continuing the build. Part of our functionality experiments included a new casting process with a product called Flex Foam It. This allows the puppet arms and torsos to be lighter and softer, which gives them a wonderfully creepy ability to bend a bit more and move their fingers slightly when they touch a surface!

And finally- we are delighted to welcome to our workshop, Grahame Kent, who is Props Builder for all the wonderful puppet sized weaponry and props galore that you will be seeing in the show! Yay Grahame!